Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
“All spoke well of him and were amazed at
the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this
Joseph's son?"”
But the most
amazing thing about grace is how offensive it actually is.
It was quite the
homecoming.
Jesus had become
a star. Everyone was talking about
him. His words were remarkable.
And then, upon
returning home to Nazareth, his neighbors, his family, those who knew him from
the time of his youth, eagerly awaited to hear what he had to say.
Gracious words.
And yet it is
always a two edged sword.
For every
gracious word, there is a word of judgment.
There is no
forgiveness apart from an acknowledgment of sin.
Grace is
offensive.
And if grace
doesn’t offend you, you probably don’t understand grace.
Next week's Gospel
is a continuation of this week’s lesson and what we will find out is that one
moment everyone in Jesus hometown spoke well of him and were amazed at the
graciousness of his words – and then in the next moment they were ready to
throw him off a cliff and kill him.
Grace does that.
Grace is good
news, except it is also bad news.
When I declare to
you that your sins are forgiven I’m making two powerful statements.
First, that you
have sinned. That’s a word of judgment,
the bad news.
And secondly,
that you have been forgiven, the good news.
But even in the
grace of forgiveness, the offense remains.
Grace is
offensive to those who have been wronged.
Grace is
offensive to those who desire justice, and promote righteousness and the rule
of law.
To illustrate
this point, imagine if we had a president who decided to embrace the words
of Emma Lazareth’s Poem that is on the
Statue of Liberty.
You know it.
"Give me
your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Imagine if the
Statue of Liberty was turned to face Latin America.
Imagine if that
president offered citizenship to all who had come here illegally, forgiving
their crime, granting them amnesty.
Imagine if that
president welcomed those who continue to come, either out of economic necessity
or fleeing persecution.
Imagine.
Good news to the
poor.
Release to the
captives.
Sight to the
blind.
And freedom to
the oppressed.
Gracious acts
offered by a president to the thousands and thousands of immigrants, both
documented and undocumented, legal and illegal, those who are here already, and
those yet to come.
Imagine.
How would our
nation respond to such gracious acts of a president?
Likely, the
response would be the same as the response of the people in Nazareth to Jesus.
At first we’d be
amazed at the graciousness.
And then we’d
attempt to throw him or her over a cliff.
We’d want to
throw him or her over a cliff, because we, like so many others, love justice
and righteousness, and are offended by grace.
Granting amnesty
is offensive to many in our land.
This is the thing
though. This is precisely the kind of
grace Jesus came proclaiming.
Good news to the
poor, is bad news for the rich.
Release to the
captives, doesn’t sit well with the captors.
Freedom for the
oppressed, means defeating the oppressors.
Grace is bad news
for all who love justice and righteousness.
Why?
Because justice
and righteousness demand that people get what they deserve, according to their
merit.
But grace is the unmerited
favor of God. Unmerited.
Grace is grace
precisely because it is not deserved.
Because there is nothing we can do to earn it.
And so if you
love justice and righteousness, you will be offended by grace.
In the example of
immigration, people who love law and order despise the possibility that we
might offer amnesty to the illegals, and do so graciously. They despise it. Grace is that offensive.
Our human
tendency is to be offended by grace shown to others.
It also resists
grace shown to us.
And this is what
I meant earlier when I said that “There is no forgiveness apart from an
acknowledgment of sin.”
Imagine if I got
up before you and declared to you that you are forgiven, specifically for your
racist attitudes.
Or imagine if I
forgave you for your idolatrous love of money and the security it offers.
The list could go
on and on.
But the chances
are you would bristle at the thought of being labeled a racist, even though I
would contend that all of us are at least a little bit racist.
Likewise with the
love of money. None of us likes to admit
that money is as important to us as it is.
But the truth is we live in a materialistic society. We just do.
But if I say that
you are forgiven for these “sins” I am also saying that you have committed
these sins.
And often we
simply do not want to admit our own sinfulness, and so we can’t accept the
grace of God’s forgiveness.
Jesus said: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing."
Good news for the
poor.
Release to the
captives.
Sight to the
blind.
Freedom for the
oppressed.
Grace upon grace,
regardless who it offends.
"Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
God has chosen the Way of Grace.
God didn’t put it up for a vote.
And God could care less that it is
offensive to us.
Do we want to
follow this Jesus?
This Jesus who
stood up before his friends and relatives in Nazareth and declared a Day Full
of Grace, the year of the Lord’s favor, unmerited as it is?
Consider this.
Many people
maintain that ours is a Christian country, and indeed, throughout the years the
majority of our citizens have professed their faith in Christ Jesus.
Having said that though,
remember that ours is actually NOT a Christian Nation, but rather a nation that
guarantees the freedom of religion. You can
be whatever you choose to be.
Yet many of us
continue to identify ourselves as a Christian nation.
What does that
mean?
For many
Christians, when they say ‘Christian Nation’ what they mean, what they desire,
is that the nation be one where justice and righteousness prevail. They lift up the Ten Commandments.
And yet the
message of Jesus is not that we must become righteous and do justice, by our
own efforts and actions.
Jesus proclaims
the reign of grace.
If we truly want
to be a Christian Nation it is grace, not a demand for righteousness, that must
abound.
Likewise for us
as individuals.
To follow Jesus
does not mean that we judge our neighbor in righteousness, but rather that we
love our neighbor as Christ has first loved us, which means, graciously.
Under the realm
of grace, all are welcome, all are forgiven, and none are excluded.
Offensive as that
is, that is the way of Jesus.
Which, by the
way, is why they killed him.
I once heard it
said that “All are welcome in the Church, but if any would desire to become
leaders in the church, they must first conform their lives to a biblical
lifestyle.”
Of course when a
leader in the Church says that there is usually a bit of self-righteousness
associated with it.
But this is the
thing.
To follow Jesus
is to live under his grace, and it is to recognize that all of us are dependent
on the forgiveness that he grants.
None of us are
righteous on our own.
Were it not for
the Lord’s favor, we would all stand condemned.
I’m not a pastor
because I am righteous of my own accord.
I’m a pastor
because I have experienced God’s forgiveness, and can bear witness to that.
As Christians all
of us are called “to bring good news to
the poor,
to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favor."
And we proclaim
this word of grace boldly, because we have first experienced such grace in our
own lives.
Amen